Open Letter to New York State Adoption Equality

In an effort to unite all advocates and advocacy groups around the Weprin/Montgomery bill, NYARC delivered the following letter to two representatives of New York State Adoption Equality, a former core partner with NYARC. A copy of the letter is here.

Update: the Weprin/Montgomery bill ultimately garnered overwhelming support from every corner of the state, with 101 co-sponsors in the Assembly and the historic 56-6 passage in the Senate. NYSAE nevertheless said “no” to this letter.

On behalf of adult adopted persons from New York and from across the country, we ask that you and New York State Adoption Equality unite with us around A5494/S3419, the adoptee rights bill sponsored by Assembly Member David Weprin and Senator Velmanette Montgomery (the Weprin/Montgomery bill). The Weprin/Montgomery bill has already received overwhelming support from our supporters. It also has nearly 80 co-sponsors in the New York Assembly, and we expect many more co-sponsors to be added in the coming days and weeks, both in the Senate and in the Assembly.

In our recent meeting with you and others in Albany, Assembly Member Weprin requested that all advocacy groups—including the American Adoption Congress, NYSAE, and Unsealed Initiative—unite with us to pursue enactment of the Weprin/Montgomery bill. In an unprecedented response, the AAC and Unsealed Initiative agreed and committed to the bill, as did the New York Adoptee Rights Coalition and its partners. You and NYSAE, however, continued to insist on pursuing a competing bill that has little support in the legislature and will cause confusion among legislators and advocates as the Weprin/Montgomery bill moves ahead.

The successful united effort to secure Governor Andrew Cuomo’s veto of A5036B, a badly regressive bill from 2017, shows that we can accomplish clean and unrestricted adoptee rights reform in New York—but only if we unite around our issue. We now have our best chance in decades to enact clean legislation in New York, but it will not happen without all advocacy groups uniting around a single clean bill. That bill is the Weprin/Montgomery bill.

Please let us know in writing if New York State Adoption Equality will join us and all of our partners and supporters, as well as the AAC and Unsealed Initiative, in endorsing the Weprin/Montgomery bill and moving it to enactment. It’s up to us to make this happen.

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The New York Adoptee Rights Coalition works to restore the right of all adult adoptees in New York to obtain their own original birth certificates, without conditions or restrictions. Join Us • Read More…

Reader Interactions

Comments

Because people do not want to unite. Because of infighting. Because some legislators don’t understand the complexities and think that mothers of adoption loss and adoptees are adversarial with each other. Because old ways of thinking still exist. Because opposition is strong. Because adoptees are still thought of as children. There are hundreds of reasons why a good adoptee access bill is difficult to pass.

This bill is the closest we’ve come to a bill that focuses on adoptees’ rights and not a compromise with opposition organizations.

I need to have access to my Original Birth Certificate since I will be 70 in October and this issue, and most of my adoption details have been a mystery to me my entire life. My adoptive parents, Mae and Dave Bernstein never told me anything when they were alive and our family kept it a secret also. Thank you in advance!
Sincerely Hank Bernstein, born Jeffrey Dorf, in Staten Island, (Richmond) New York October 16, 1949.

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Organizations that Support Us

The following organizations, while not core partners, support the work of the New York Adoptee Rights Coalition.